Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1939. WORK ON THE WATERFRONT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 March 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1939. WORK ON THE WATERFRONT.

ALL New Zealand has an interest in the conference on A waterfront work which was in Wellington yesterday, with the Minister of Labour (Mr Webb) presidm o . Ri o htj or wronody the general conditions in which cargo is load and unloaded in New Zealand ports have become a bywo <1 and a reproach. Criticism of these conditions, and humiiiati comparisons between our standards of port e ffi ciency Xtedto ruling in other parts of the world have been contested to some extent, but a remedy plainly is needed for the state o affairs in which cargo handling work m the ports is so ofte held up over trivial disputes. An example in point occurred in Wellington on the immediate eve of the conference. Because one man in a vtoi v „ party was discharged, work was stopped on one steamer and refused on another, and a shipment of 3,000 cases of apples, instead of being transhipped in Wellington was carried b v to Nelson, while the oversea ship on which the apples v ere to have been loaded sailed without them Any reasonable(human being will agree with the Minister of Labour that a r°n of t kind which occurred on this occasion should never be aU™ ed to hold up work. The circumstances w . ere n^ eserlb , b ? Minister of Marketing (Mr Nash) as tragic. They might better be described, perhaps, as intolerably outrageous. If what Mr Nash called “all the little avoidable hold-ups” were as frequent in other branches of industry as they are in the ports, the whole economy of the Dominion would be wrecked and thrown out of gear. The Government evidently should be supported in its declared determination to clear up the whol,e position and to establish conditions of efficient working on the waterfronts. While he expressed the opinion both employers and workers in waterside industry were wrong in many ways, the Minister of Labour was satisfactorily definite in insisting on the need for working discipline and in his declaration that loafing, or any attempt by unions to protect loafers, would not be tolerated. Mr Webb said, amongst other things:— If men think that they can go on the waterfronts or on public works or any Government building with the idea that they can please themselves what they dp and how they do it, then they have got another think coming to them. Observations of a similar tenor were made by other Ministers. It must be hoped that they mean what they say and that the Government is determined to bring the facts clearly to light and to deal drastically with whatever is at fault m the state of affairs now ruling on the waterfronts. The point to be emphasised is that the interests of all sections of the population, and not least those of wage-earners and their families throughout the Dominion, demand the establishment and maintenance of efficient standards of cargohandling in the ports. In a country as dependent on external trade as New Zealand is, these standards have a highly important bearing on general economic welfare aiid attempts either by waterside workers or their employers unfairly to exploit the rest of the community cannot be resisted too strenuously. In the present, conference the right opening lead has been given. The outcome will be awaited with anxious interest, not least by the farmers of the Dominion, many of whom are faced by a narrowing margin of returns over costs and have every right to resent the further handicap imposed iipon them by “little avoidable hold-ups” and other departures from fair dealing and from reasonable working standards in the handling of export produce and other cargo.